page_title: History of rail transport in Russia
section_title: Railways in the Soviet Union (1922–1991)
hierarchical_section_title: History of rail transport in Russia / General history / Railways in the Soviet Union (1922–1991)
caption_attribution_description: English: Japanese D51 locomotive outside Yuzhno-Sakhalin Railway Station, Sakhalin Island, Russia
context_page_description: Russia was and is the largest country in the world. Its geography of N.-S. rivers and E.-W. commerce, plus, importantly, the mostly flat terrain, made it very suited to develop railroads as the basic mode of transportation.
  Today Russian Railways, a state-owned railway company, is one of the biggest railway companies in the world with 0.95 million employees and a monopoly within Russia. The total length of line used by the Russian Railways is, at 85,500 kilometres, one of the largest in the world, exceeded only by the United States.
context_section_description: After the foundation of the Soviet Union the People's Commissariat of Railways (after 1946 named the Ministry of Railways ) expanded the railway network to a total length of 106,100 km by 1940. A notable project of the late 1920s and one of the centerpieces of the first five-year plan was the Turkestan–Siberia Railway, linking Western Siberia via Eastern Kazakhstan with Uzbekistan.
  During the Great Patriotic War (World War II) the railway system played a vital role in the war effort transporting military personnel, equipment and freight to the frontlines and often evacuating entire factories and towns from European Russia to the Ural region and Siberia. The loss of mining and industrial centers of the western Soviet Union necessitated speedy construction of new railways during the wartime. Particularly notable among them was the railway to the Arctic coal mines of Vorkuta, extended after the war to Labytnangi on the Ob River; construction work to extend it all the way to the Yenisey continued into the 1950s, aborted with the death of Joseph Stalin.
  As a result of the World War II victory over Japan, the southern half of Sakhalin Island was returned to Russia in 1945. The 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) railway network built by the Japanese during their forty years of control of Southern Sakhalin now became part of Soviet Railways as well (as a separate Sakhalin Railway), the only 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) rail system within USSR (or today's Russia).
  After the war the Soviet railway network was re-built and further expanded to more than 145,000 km of track by major additions such as Baikal Amur Mainline.
  In the late 1960s the official gauge was redefined as 1,520 mm (4 ft 11 ²⁷⁄₃₂ in) (i.e. 4 mm smaller) to allow better running without regauging rolling stock. The difference is within the normal tolerance so little immediate effect was shown and conversion took place progressively over 30 years as lines were maintained and upgraded. See 1520 mm railways redefinitions.
caption: Japanese D51 steam locomotive outside the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Railway Station Sakhalin Island, Russia (2007)
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